Overview

Gender

male

PATRICK BUECHNER - Video Game Industry Executive

Patrick Buechner has been helping develop, launch, and manage some of video gaming’s biggest brands – from The Sims to Mass Effect to Star Wars – for over 23 years. His work has focused on the marketing and strategic challenges of bringing new game ideas to new audiences. Patrick led the marketing for Electronic Arts’ first version of the people simulator, The Sims. Expanding the audience to teenage girls, championing the concept of expansion packs, and pioneering the use of consumer research to drive game design and business decisions, Patrick helped turn a game that was expected to reach 325,000 gamers into a franchise that has sold more than 200 million copies.

Patrick went on to lead marketing for Electronic Arts’ most significant new IP launches including Spore, a game that allowed players to evolve life, from a single cell organism to a space fairing civilization, and Dragon Age: Origins, the company’s most successful new intellectual property launch to that point. When Dragon Age’s development studio, BioWare, became an autonomous business unit within Electronic Arts, Patrick joined the new executive team as CMO. BioWare was at its zenith creating games like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Patrick’s marketing, PR, and community team succeeded in building programs that matched the scale and quality of those games. The Old Republic was the fastest selling massively multiplayer online game in history and Electronic Arts’ fastest selling PC game of all time.

In 2015, Patrick joined Amazon as a founding member of Amazon Game Studios, helping to establish a new video game business unit from the ground up. As part of the division’s leadership team, he has created and led a global publishing organization with responsibility for marketing, product research, community development, influencer relations, and PR. In 2020, Patrick joined Manticore Games as Chief Marketing Officer.